Hey guys, check out how much money I’ve made with ONE affiliate program over the past few days:

Isn’t that impressive? I bet you’d like to make that much money in a few days too. Wouldn’t this be a great time to flash my referral link? Wow, now we can all make a ton of money together. Isn’t harmony grand?

</scarcasm>

Ok, enough bull. I’m sure you’ve all seen these kinds of posts before. “HAY GUISE, LOOK AT MY MONIES!” Wow, a five figure check. Nice job. How much of that is profit?

Keep in mind that, unless you’re getting 100% of your clicks from organic sources, chances are you’ve paid for some advertising. The figure in that screenshot above is the result of a campaign I was running on Facebook. Facebook is expensive. In fact, 90% of that money is going to go to paying for all of the clicks I received during that campaign (I told you I’m not very good at this). So, if you can do basic mathematics, you can see that I didn’t actually make very much. I got a load of useful demographics data, but dollar wise I didn’t do so well. Still, everybody loves an earnings screenshot, right?

Don’t fake it

I was chatting with a wise man on AIM a few weeks back. He was telling me to keep trying new things, and eventually I’d find something that worked. I jokingly suggested that I should Photoshop some extra 0s on one of my earnings screenshots, and was immediately rebuked. No matter how sneaky you think you are, you will get caught. When you do, your credibility will crash. Think of your top three favorite affiliate gods. How would you feel if one of them admitted that they make only 1/100 of what they claimed? Their advice, their word, becomes worthless. They’d lose their readers, and they’d fade into obscurity.

Of course, plenty of people post real checks and earnings screenshots. Those are awesome. Just remember next time you’re looking at one: That’s not all profit.

Geoff note: Keep in mind that I write these posts the night before they go up. With my luck, someone will post a huge check today and think that this post refers to them. I’ll just say it now: This post is not directed at anybody, so don’t bug me about it.